Currently, for automotive applications, different microphones and processing components may be used for telephony, speech recognition, and active noise reduction. For example, a single cardioid microphone may be placed in the headliner above the driver to provide best reception for telephony; and omni-directional microphones may be placed on the rear-view mirror to provide best reception for automatic speech recognition (ASR). Additional microphones, typically one per passenger, may be placed above the driver and passenger head to enable active noise reduction to cancel the effect of, for example, engine noise.
The use of multiple microphones and processing components may be expensive, and may have be of compromised quality, as the number of microphones available for each purpose is limited by cost and design constraints.
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